1970s: The Mainstreaming of Vintage Dressing
Early 1970s – Rising Popularity
New York
Times
fashion editor Patricia Peterson’s 1967 characterization of the
popularity of old-
clothing styles as “the beginning of a new fashion era” was
highly prescient.
In the 1970s, anachronistic dressing becomes a clear mainstream
fashion trend in press coverage
. Angela Taylor reports in 1970 “There’s Some-
Culture Unbound
, Volume 7
, 2015
[54]
thing New at Altman’s: Shop that Has Authentic Old Clothes” that the New York
department store opened a vintage boutique on its sixth floor. Taylor quips, “One
thing that’s been missing in department stores is the thrift shop. That breach has
been filled by Altman’s with a cozy lamp
-lighted room on the sixth floor called
‘Yesterday’s News.’” Two photos accompany the text showing young women
dressed in 1930s –
1940s clothing. The article characterizes the garments
as “vin-
tage” and “authentically old.” The vintage trend seems to have spread across
coasts by 1971. Sandra Haggarty (1970) in a
Los Angeles Times
’s column “On
Being Black” noted, “Recently I observed some young people shopping in a local
second
-hand clothing store. As is chic today, they were junkin’ to dress them-
selves as
unlike
the Establishment as possible.” While Haggarty refers to junking
as anti
-Establishment, at the end of the column she observes that the new middle
-
class popularity of secondhand is
leading to higher prices in Los Angeles used-
clothing stores.
After 1970, the
New York Times
regularly reported on vintage shop locations
around the metropolitan region. Some articles were in the Real Estate section de-
scribing particular neighborhoods and
their shopping attractions. Other
Times
arti-
cles on vintage were part of a regular feature called “Shop Talk” that discussed
new stores of interest. For example, a 1973 article by Barbara Delatiner is about
Rag Garden, a shop in East Hampton. The owner, M
rs. Frank, describes why vin-
tage is becoming popular.
Mrs. Frank believes that the popularity of her merchandise stems from two factors.
“The fabrics are soft and flowing. Sensuous and marvelous to feel,” she said. “May-
be the women’s lib girls will yell
at me, but these old things are so much more femi-
nine. So many of the things, too, are handmade as opposed to the machine
-made
mass
-produced clothes today. And the colors are so vibrant, so alive. I love them.”
Her custom
ers, most of whom are in the 20s an
d 30s (the teen
-agers buy denim be-
cause they can’t afford the antiques) are also interested in being different, in dressing
uniquely. “It’s not nostalgia,” she said. “They haven’t spent their youth in the thirties
and forties and I don’t have many fifties pieces here.”
In July 1973,
Time Magazine
’s “Rags to riches (really),” described how
secondhand Levi's denim jeans, adorned with embroidery, are being sold at “de-
signer prices” by department stores Lord & Taylor and Saks Fifth Avenue. “The
highest prices are tagged to genuine used denim tempered by years of wear and
spruced up with colorful embroidery. Many of the old jeans are acquired by scrap-
clothes dealers and sold to boutiques
”
(
Time
1973: 52).
1970s: Peak Vintage?
As the vintage trend builds, in 1975, Caterine Milinaire and Carol Troy publish
Cheap Chic
, perhaps the first consumer guidebook to thrift store shopping and
vintage style.
It featured individuals with unique sartorial sense who incorporate
thrifted garments into their looks. Milinaire and Troy (1975: 79-
80) devoted a
chapter to “Antiques: Shopping the Thrift Stores,” which they began by saying